


A Little Help

by Zaniida



Series: Open Chapterfics (POI) [10]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Additional tags likely to be added, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Foster Care, Gen, I'm not even sure what to tag, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:00:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22248286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zaniida/pseuds/Zaniida
Summary: “Nathan, you’re my friend, and I love you, but I am not participating in your random ghost hunts.”“And normally, I wouldn’t even ask you, but as you’re the one who put me in this damn hospital bed…”Which was why Harold was spending his Saturday night toting random items up the stairs of a dusty old library, instead of working on his Project.
Relationships: Harold Finch & John Reese, Harold Finch & Nathan Ingram, Nathan Ingram & John Reese
Series: Open Chapterfics (POI) [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1098849
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8





	A Little Help

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Stingalingaling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stingalingaling/gifts).



> So this gift is over a year late, but hey, **Stingalingaling** , hope this hits the right spot for you! Sorry for the delay; I needed to weave Harold's conundrum into the first chapter, and until brainstorming with my beta a couple days ago, I didn't have a clue how the plot hook and Harold's Project would tie together. Now I do! That's a relief.
> 
> So, this tale is set in a POI AU, wherein Harold's past is a little different, and he never got involved with the government; he's still on the run and living under an assumed identity, and he's still got something that takes on a role similar to the Machine, but don't expect all the details to line up. Plot-wise, this would replace the Pilot; time-wise, it's probably a couple years earlier.
> 
> Nathan's still alive, and not in danger of government hitmen. I've ramped up one aspect of their dichotomy (Harold very logical/skeptical, Nathan much the other way), but turned another on its head (Harold already cares about innocent victims, and Nathan did not need to talk him into it, let alone need to die to make Harold take his responsibilities seriously).
> 
> Other than that... guess I should let you read it before I get too spoilery ^_^

“Nathan, you’re my friend, and I love you, but I am not participating in your random ghost hunts.”

“It’s not _ghosts_ , Harold.” Gingerly, Nathan pulled himself up a little before running out of energy and collapsing back into his pillows, his eyes a bit foggy from the morphine. “And normally, I wouldn’t even ask you, but as you’re the one who put me in this damn hospital bed…”

Harold dropped his gaze unhappily. It was true, of course, and they were _almost_ through with the apologies phase. Probably.

“Look, just… you’re getting worse, all right? Even Arthur’s noticed it. We’re _worried_ about you, Nathan.”

Back at MIT, Nathan had been the odd man out in their little group, preferring soft sci-fi to more plausible fare, and trading in humanist fables for “ _I want to believe_ ” (at least a decade before that phrase became the tagline for a show that Harold couldn’t stand and Nathan couldn’t get enough of). He was the only one of them who didn’t care for _Scooby-Doo_ (“You know it’s always going to have a mundane explanation”), and Arthur had stopped bringing up episodes of laughable ghost-hunting shows because Nathan was “open to the thought of the unknown” and seemed willing to take them seriously.

Despairing of his friend’s ability to approach the world in a rational manner, Harold had kept Nathan’s hobbies at arm’s length, mostly ignoring the fact that his best friend was off holding seances or whatever, and occasionally trying to convince him to take up more sensible pursuits.

“Why do you think I invited you to go skiing to begin with?” Harold pressed. “I mean, you’ve been superstitious for as long as I’ve known you, but ever since you got back from Peru, it’s like you’ve jumped right into the deep end.”

“Look,” Nathan said with a wan grin, “I know I’m not going to convince you of anything, but all you have to do is pick up a few things and drop them off at the library. All right? I’ll give you a list.” He was already trying to tap it out on his phone, one-handed (his good hand being currently sprained).

“‘The library’?” Harold exclaimed, gawking at him. “The place that the city nearly had _condemned_ ? I swear, Nathan, all that dust and mold isn’t good for your lungs.”

“Right, right.” The corner of his mouth quirked up. “I should stick to something healthy, like skiing.”

Harold winced.

There was silence between them for a long moment, punctuated by the steady beeps of the medical equipment, and the nearly inaudible tapping of Nathan’s thumb as he painstakingly spelled out his shopping list.

Which was why Harold was spending his Saturday night shopping for random items and toting them all up the stairs of a dusty old library, one that his friend had picked up on a whim rather than let the antique building go to waste. On Harold’s phone was a description of whatever bizarre rituals Nathan laid out in his free time… when he wasn’t letting himself get cajoled into ill-fated skiing trips that ended in broken legs and bruised ribs and, for Harold, the kind of gnawing guilt that let Nathan turn around and manipulate _him_ for once.

Well, fine. Harold was a big boy; he could take his punishment.

Recreating all this random nonsense was Nathan’s way of communing with the supernatural (or that was Harold’s best guess; he couldn’t pretend to know his friend’s mind on matters this much in defiance of logic). But at least setting random objects around an abandoned library wasn’t likely to result in bodily injury (not unless the floor was more rotten than it appeared)—at least Nathan had _that_ going for him. It was dusty enough to make Harold glad that he’d outgrown his childhood asthma, and to wonder if he wasn’t inhaling some sort of fungal spores even through the dust mask. The place was fairly cold, and dark, and a bit damp: perfect breeding grounds for some of the nastier forms of mold.

He felt a little bad for the old books sitting around dying, but, honestly, the world was full of books, and you couldn’t save all of them from their inevitable obsolescence.

Sighing, Harold wiped off the little round table he found, set down his shopping bags, and started spreading out the items, comparing them to the shopping list to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. Some candles—Nathan had been quite particular about the type, tiny scentless Shabbat candles, from the Jewish aisle—and a box of matches. Surprisingly, Nathan hadn’t wanted him to light them, simply to place both items on the floor near a particular bookcase.

(Harold would’ve been tempted to just place them under the bookcase closest to the table, but Nathan had actually caused himself physical pain to draw a sketchy map of the place. Any detail that Nathan considered that important to the task, Harold was going to treat as inviolable.)

A small assortment of food went next to the candles: little sausages and cheeses, the kind that mostly came out during the holidays, and dried fruit, and crackers, and the smallest containers of kiddie juice that he could find (given how tiny they were—barely a mouthful—it was mildly amusing that they were decorated with Clifford the giant cartoon dog). A case of half-size water bottles, too, and a variety of small cups and bowls, from a shot glass on up to a child’s cereal bowl. Fluffy rags, and a little sewing kit (the kind you find at checkout stands); a spool of thick thread, and one of thin cord.

And the tiniest tools he could find: an eyeglass screwdriver with interchangeable blades, a little pocket-knife, some wrenches, a probably useless crowbar, even a hammer so small that he’d had to go to a specialty shop to find one that suited Nathan’s specifications. Plus a couple boxes of thin nails and screws.

It was the toolkit that threw him; before that, he’d been wondering if Nathan was keeping… well, not a dog. If it were a normal pet, like a cat or a dog or a parakeet, he could’ve kept it at home, and wouldn’t have any reason to hide it from Harold in the first place. No, Nathan was just the type to be foolish enough to smuggle a wild animal back to New York—maybe one of those tiny monkeys?—and keep it cooped up in a musty old library.

But a monkey wouldn’t explain the toolkit or the candles, and Nathan hadn’t said to lay out a bowl of food or water. Surely an animal couldn’t get into the water bottles.

As Harold gathered up his laptop (not bothering to grab the shopping bags), he reflected that these days, _nothing_ Nathan did was fully explicable.

* * *

Task completed, he tossed the dust mask in the nearest dumpster and headed home, free to turn his mind back to his own work, which, while every bit as secretive as Nathan’s, was a little more grounded in reality.

His machine was working, he’d established that much to his own satisfaction. By comparing various types of data about foster kids—everything from facial expressions, tone of voice, and choice of vocabulary to how often the kids missed school (or skipped lunch) and the number (and type) of hospital visits since they’d entered the system—it could pin down the likelihood of the child needing intervention. The program was spitting out information that could pinpoint abusers, actually _save kids’ lives_.

Except, Harold had no idea what to _do_ with the information.

Going to the police was impossible, of course. Even if he weren’t on the run from a double murder charge, it would still have required admitting that he’d hacked into a bunch of systems to get the information that the algorithm was working with, and that admission was far more likely to result in his incarceration than any benefit to the children he hoped to help.

Trying to approach the police anonymously had resulted in the threat of a citation for wasting a policeman’s time (on the one occasion he hadn’t been outright ignored). Approaching CPS hadn’t gotten him anywhere useful. He wasn’t ready to spill the whole story to the press, and the various online fora he’d been lurking on had yet to turn up anyone in a position to make use of the warnings.

Each time the news held another tale of a foster kid being neglected, brutalized, or outright murdered, Harold felt a little more helpless… especially when the name on the news matched one of the kids his algorithm had already drawn his attention to. Kids he should have been able to help, kids he knew ahead of time to be in danger, but… what more could he do?

By the time he reached his flat, he still hadn’t come up with a better answer. He rested his head against the steering wheel for a moment, took a few deep breaths to try to rid himself of the frustration, and reached for his phone. At least he might let Nathan know that the foolish task was done.

It wasn’t in his pocket.

He ruled out everything from the likely (dropped it under the seat) to the implausible (in the trunk, even though he hadn’t touched the trunk since before the shopping trip) before resigning himself to the obvious conclusion: He’d left the dang thing on the table, back at the library.

The phone-tracking utility on his laptop confirmed it.

* * *

Trudging up the stairs again, he cursed his own laziness, because if he had tidied up after himself and gathered up the shopping bags, he would have easily noticed his phone. But he’d been in far too much of a hurry to get out of there.

But moving all the shopping bags didn’t reveal the phone.

And it was definitely in the building, right? Where had he been using it? He’d mostly left it on the table, but a couple times, while referring to Nathan’s instructions, he’d brought it with him. Had he dropped it behind a bookshelf?

The place where he’d left the candles: no phone. But… the box had been torn open.

The little matchbox that he’d left beside it was gone.

So were the tools.

What the hell?

The food had been gotten into as well. Not chewed at, as you might expect if there were some wild animal in the area (there were surely rats in here). The bulk of it was still there, but chunks had been cut out of it… not bitten or torn, but cut in straight lines.

Okay, so maybe there was a squatter here… was Nathan hiding some fugitive? Harold felt an uneasy tingling down the back of his neck. But that didn’t make sense: The meats and cheeses were pretty tiny, so why not carry them all away? Why take only a little bit of each?

It was at this point that Harold began to have the distinct impression that this was one of Nathan’s pranks.

Nathan loved pranks; he’d been pulling them on people for probably as long as he’d been alive, and certainly as long as Harold had known him. In fact, Harold’s introduction to Nathan had been catching him on Arthur’s TRS-80, doctoring up Arthur’s presentation ( _The Effect of Your Hamburger on Global Temperature_ ) with data points about unicorn farts. Horrified, Harold had rushed to warn his friend, only to find that Arthur actually appreciated the lengths to which Nathan went in order to pull off his pranks.

And it _was_ the middle of October; Nathan’s pranks got more frequent (and more creative) the closer you got to his favorite holiday. Maybe this was a way to get back at Harold for coaxing him into that disastrous ski trip. Being in a hospital bed wouldn’t even stop the guy, not when he could call in favors and even hire people to handle the dirty work.

But… Harold was the one person that Nathan _never_ pulled pranks on. Not once. Not since Harold had explained his viewpoint: Didn’t he have enough things to be paranoid about without also keeping an eye out for his _friends_ playing tricks on him?

And that had been enough for Nathan to stop targeting Harold. After all, Nathan was the sort of prankster who honestly wanted both parties to be having fun; it was, he felt, the distinction between teasing and bullying. Teasing brought both parties closer together, while bullying made one party happy at the expense of the other, and Nathan could never enjoy seeing others get hurt.

So Nathan wouldn’t be pulling a prank on _him_ , right? It went against everything Harold knew of his friend.

But if it wasn’t a prank, and it wasn’t an animal or a fugitive or a squatter, then…

Well, at least the phone had been pretty well charged; Harold got the laptop from his car, and brought it up to the second floor, and logged into his phone-tracking utility (again). And told the phone to ring.

_There’s lots o’ shady characters, lots o’ dirty deals_  
_Every name’s an alias in case somebody squeals_ —

The dusty air was filled with the unmistakable sound of Harold’s ringtone.

Not on the table… not under the furniture or behind the bookshelf that Nathan had indicated. It was…

…

…above him?

Harold looked up. It was definitely coming from the ceiling, and… far too loud to be the next floor up (a floor he hadn’t even gone to, for that matter). Plus, it was sounding a little… echo-y?

Was his phone in the _air duct_ ?

The chance that this was one of Nathan’s pranks… hmm.

Was there any reason that Nathan might prank him in a way Nathan thought he’d enjoy?

Surprise birthday party, perhaps? One of those odd social rituals that Harold had never understood, but then, Nathan delighted in coaxing Harold into the social life that he’d missed out on while growing up in backwater, Michigan.

It was an odd place to hold a surprise party. Perhaps the start of a scavenger hunt that _ended_ at the party?

Of course, it wasn’t anywhere near his actual birthday… but then, he’d never shared his birthday with Nathan. And while both Nathan and Arthur were aware that he wasn’t _really_ Harold Wren, he doubted that either of them could’ve come close to locating his true identity. Which meant they’d have no idea when he was actually born.

And if Nathan wanted to ensure that he finally got a public celebration of his birthday… well, maybe he’d just picked a random date. Or a date with some significance that Harold might appreciate, if he couldn’t publicly acknowledge his _actual_ birthday.

Besides, what was the alternative? If it wasn’t someone pulling a prank on him, then what the hell was going on?

“All right, Nathan, you got me,” Harold murmured. “Very funny. Ha.” He didn’t actually imagine that anyone was listening; there were plenty of shelves to hide behind, but the floors were pretty creaky, and he would’ve heard anyone else moving around here. And certainly seen their tracks in the dust.

There was an uncomfortable prickling at the back of his neck, and he was trying to ignore it because he’d never believed in ghosts or poltergeists or supernatural activity of any kind, and he’d be damned if he was going to start now. Over something as simple as a… a phone getting stuck in the air ducts.

Part of him wanted to run away already, and he was not about to let that kind of irrational fear control him.

The library was the old type, with the kind of ladders that hooked onto the shelves and moved along on wheels. Before the ringtone stopped, Harold had pinned down a good location; he marked it and went to his car for a toolkit and a flashlight, getting increasingly irritated with the delays.

Back in the room, he pinged his phone again.

_There’s lots o’ shady characters, lots o’ dirty deals_ —

Near some sort of maintenance hatch… a good five feet closer to the door than it had been.

There’s no way it just vibrated over that far. Right?

Maybe he’d been too quick to rule out animals. A ferret, maybe? A raccoon? Had he been right about the monkey?

Maybe he should be taking precautions against getting attacked. Against getting rabies.

But he wasn’t _hearing_ anything in the ducts. Not before, not now. No animals scrabbling around, or chewing, or whining.

Nothing.

He climbed the ladder, put the toolkit on the top shelf, and got to work opening the hatch.

“Nathan, I swear,” he said as he pulled out the last screw, “if you’ve been keeping a monkey in here then I am going to do _worse_ to you than just break your leg.”

And with that, he took a breath and pulled the metal panel out of the way, tensed against the possibility that an animal was about to land on his head.

When nothing happened, he laid the panel on the shelf, stepped up on the very highest rung (never mind the warning signs), shone the flashlight around inside (in the hopes that it might scare off whatever was in there), and then pushed his head up into the hatch.

The beam of light illuminated some sort of… nest?

A pile of rags—not bunched up, the way some animal might have dragged them together, but folded rather neatly into little stacks.

Nearby, the sewing kit, toolkit, the candles and the missing matchbox.

One of the rags was partially wrapped around bits of meat and cheese. And one of the little juice boxes had made it up here, somehow—it was leaning against the side of the duct. There was even a cup of water, with bits of cord tied to the handles like a harness.

And there was his phone. Some of the buttons had been removed, as had the back cover; the buttons were carefully stacked to one side.

Staring open-mouthed at the assortment, Harold couldn’t even begin to put together a scenario that made sense of it.

“Where’s Nathan?” came a high-pitched voice from behind him. “Why have you hurt him?”

Turning, Harold found himself faced with the gleaming blade of a knife… held by a very small man in a tiny black suit.

**Author's Note:**

> This is unlikely to get updated any time soon, but feel free to speculate about how John will help Harold with his problem. Who knows, maybe you'll come up with a better solution than we just did ^_^
> 
> Same goes for if my choice of computer there was a bad one for an MIT programmer in the early 80's. If you have a better idea for what Arthur might've used, chime in! I don't have enough info to make a realistic choice without putting in _way_ more research than this project warrants. Basically I just browsed the Wikipedia descriptions and chose one that looked neat, had a full-sized keyboard, and didn't seem to list any key drawbacks for programmers.
> 
> I should be getting back to the [Voted Focus fics](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/899210) pretty soon -- though there are still some [roadblocks](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/961696) to overcome. The [Yearly Retrospective](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1234658) (quite late) is my primary goal this month, if I can manage to focus on it; hope to have it up in another couple days here. I guess that's it for news.
> 
> Oh, and I'm not yet sure where this might go for ratings -- purely because, now that child abuse has been raised as an issue, I assume their first case will involve a right monster, and I don't yet have even a sketch of how dark it might get. _Probably_ not all that dark -- this isn't meant to be a dark fic -- but I'm just not sure. Guess we'll see how it goes!


End file.
